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sarcophagus
Jun. 5th, 2023 07:35 amTheme week! -- words related to Egyptian mummies, starting with what they were buried in:
sarcophagus (sahr-KOF-uh-guhs) - n., a stone coffin.
Usually kept above-ground but sometimes buried. Here's the sarcophagus of Khufuankh, from Giza, from the Fourth Dynasty (so 2500s BCE):
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The word's been used in English since c.1600, from Latin, from Greek sarkophágos, coffin, from (lithos) sarkophágos, lit. flesh-eating stone, a kind of limestone that purportedly consumed the flesh of corpses laid in it, from sarkós, flesh + -phágos, suffix meaning eater (of) (from éphagon, to devour/eat).
---L.
sarcophagus (sahr-KOF-uh-guhs) - n., a stone coffin.
Usually kept above-ground but sometimes buried. Here's the sarcophagus of Khufuankh, from Giza, from the Fourth Dynasty (so 2500s BCE):
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The word's been used in English since c.1600, from Latin, from Greek sarkophágos, coffin, from (lithos) sarkophágos, lit. flesh-eating stone, a kind of limestone that purportedly consumed the flesh of corpses laid in it, from sarkós, flesh + -phágos, suffix meaning eater (of) (from éphagon, to devour/eat).
---L.
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